Raindeer writes: "Every day one Exabyte of data is said to travel over the Internet – enough data to fill 300,000 of the world’s biggest hard disks or 212 million DVDs. And astonishingly, according to Internet Traffic Exchange: Market Developments and Policy Challenges a new OECD report on Internet traffic exchange, most of the thousands of networks that exchange this traffic do so without a written contract or formal agreement.

The report provides evidence that the existing Internet model works extremely well, has boosted growth and competition and brought prices for data down to 100,000 times less than that of a voice minute. A survey of 4300 networks, representing 140,000 direct exchanges of traffic, so called peerings, on the Internet, found that 99.5% of “peering agreements” were on a handshake basis, with no written contract and the exchange of data happening with no money changing hands. Moreover, in many locations, multilateral agreements are in place, using a so-called route server, where hundreds of networks will accept to exchange traffic for free with any network that joins the agreement. The parties to these agreements include not only Internet backbone, access, and content distribution networks, but also universities, NGOs, branches of government, individuals, businesses and enterprises of all sorts – a universality of the constituents of the Internet that extends far beyond the reach of any regulatory body’s influence."Link to Original Source